When Sharon Field read the 2021 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sixth assessment report on climate change, labelled a “code red for humanity” by UN Secretary General António Guterres, it planted a seed for the longest project of her artistic career.
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Not born out of anger or fear, but rather a desire to start conversations and highlight nature that means so much to her and other Australians, the winner of this year’s Foundry Art Prize embarked on a project titled The Scrolls: 3000 days... and counting.
For each of the days between Earth Hour Day on March, 26, 2022 and Earth Hour Day in 2030, Ms Field committed to drawing a plant.
“When I first started, I thought that I’d do 3000 drawings of plants,” Ms Field said.
“After I’d done 100 or so, I thought that it was going to get a bit boring for people to look at and for me to draw.
“So I did some research and came across some NASA graphs which showed global temperature increases from 1880 up to about 2030.”
Ms Field decided to embed information shown on the graph into the scrolls in various different ways, both to give the project variety, and really highlight the potential impacts of climate change.
“Sometimes the information and drawings above that graph line might be in colour and all the information below the graph line will be in black and white,” she said.
“It’s a way of showing people that we’re going to lose so much colour in our world.
“The more these temperatures go up, there’ll be less colour unless we get together and do something about this big climate behemoth that’s rolling towards us.”
Drawing inspiration from her surrounds, Ms Field has illustrated hundreds of plants so far, having recently passed the halfway point in the project.
She labels each plant with its scientific and common name, often drawing them multiple times at different points of their growth cycle.
“I find it interesting because I’m learning so much more about plants that I didn’t know before,” Ms Field said.
“I’ve met up with people all around the world who I’ve learnt so much from.
“As a result, I’ve been able to pass on that information to other people, so I’ve been able to act as a little bit of a conduit there.”
Ms Field knows the impacts of climate change can be confronting, having spent more than 20 years as a volunteer firefighter, and working in countries that are bearing the brunt of the effects of climate change.
She thinks the subject matter and format of the scrolls have helped their message resonate far and wide, with the project drawing attention both locally and overseas.
“The portability of the scrolls (makes the conversations accessible) ... people want to engage on the issues,” she said.
“Seeing plants is not confronting in the way a starving polar bear or a picture of a fire or a drought or a flood might be.
“They’re looking at the flowers ... they like seeing those things, but then they’re quite happy to start talking about the issues.
“That’s the whole point, the flowers are the secret weapon.”
Some of the questions that came out of those conversations inspired Ms Field’s winning entry into the Foundry Art Space’s 2026 ‘Nature Speaks’ Foundry Art Prize.
Nature Speaks in Fractured Tones is a series of three works examining the way nature communicates or tries to communicate above the ground, below the ground and on the ground.
Ms Field said that after spending so long working on The Scrolls: 3000 days... and counting, it was fascinating to attend the award ceremony and see how other people interpreted the theme of ‘nature speaks’.
She also said the trip reminded her that she’d long intended on bringing the scrolls to Echuca, something still on her radar for the future.
“I’ve been fascinated by the beautiful trees (in Echuca),” she said.
“Some of the lovely old red gums that were cut down — it could have been a century ago — that are sitting alongside the riverbank.
“I wonder if we’ll ever see trees of that age or magnificence again.”
With around four years of drawings still to be completed in the biggest project of her career, the end isn’t quite in sight yet for Ms Field.
While she doesn’t know if or how she’ll display them when they’re complete, she wants the scrolls to serve as a record of the nature she loves so much.
She said that it was important to her because, in years to come, she’s not sure which of the plants she’s captured will be able to be enjoyed in person.
“(A woman who saw the scrolls) asked me ‘What’s it going to be like when my grandkids are grown up?’” Ms Field said.
“It’s not a question that I could answer or she could answer.
“But we both looked at each other, and we knew, it’s going to be pretty bloody awful.”